Thursday, July 24, 2008

A bus crash in Victoria, Australia has injured at least 20 people, two of whom are listed as critical. One victim is reported to be still trapped in the wreckage.

The accident occurred between a bus and a semi-trailer on the Princes Highway in the Traralgon area around 10:50am AEST. The La Trobe Valley Busliner bus was traveling east when it collided with the back of a heavy haulage truck.

Those critically injured are being airlifted to a hospital in Melbourne. Others are being transported by Ambulance to La Trobe Valley Hospital in Traralgon.

SES crews are on scene, along with St. John Ambulance and fire crews.

The eastbound lanes of the highway have been blocked by police and traffic is being diverted.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Yesterday, Belgian Archbishop Godfried Danneels visited the Catholic University of Leuven to give a lecture on health care and religion, entitled “Care for the body, care for the mind”. Some 120 people, mainly professors at the University Hospitals, but also clerics and students, attended the conference and following piano recital.

In his introduction speech, Dean of Medicine Bernard Himpens reminded the audience how much the art of medicine had changed since the time of Andreas Vesalius, probably the Faculty’s most famous scientist. The Dean stressed the important role of the Hospital’s Biomedical Ethics Committee, but added that religion continues to be important.

“Some people even believe that good ethics must be carried by faith, and any profound ethics should result in faith,” the Dean noted. He asked the question where the evolution of a merely “passive tolerance for the Christian starting points” would lead the health care system.

In his lecture, the Archbishop acknowledged that the technical aspects of health care were probably the most important to achieve results, but that on the other hand, the medical-technical approach by itself could not guarantee the happiness of the patients.

Wikinews asked Professor Martin Hiele, Chairman of the Commission for Medical Ethics, if he felt there was a need for a lecture on the subject of religion and health care. He replied that

Prof. Bernard Spitz, from the University’s Department of Developmental Biology and head of the Hospital’s Obstetrics Department, told Wikinews that

The lecture was organised by the DeGroof Bank and the Faculty of Medicine. It is the first of three lectures on the subject of religion, spirituality and ethics in health care.

Friday, November 3, 2017

In findings reported on Tuesday, an international team of astronomers discovered an exoplanet, called NGTS-1b, revolving around M-dwarf star NGTS-1, that the team said does not fit existing notions of how stars and planets form. NGTS-1b is a gas giant, similar to Jupiter and of comparable volume and mass, but its parent star is about half the diameter and mass of the Sun, making this the most massive planet orbiting an M-dwarf ever discovered.

NGTS-1b, about 600 light years from the Earth, is so extremely close to its star that a revolution around its star takes only about 2.6 Earth days — 2.647298 ± 0.000020 — and its surface temperature is about 800 K. The planet was discovered by observing periodic fluctuations in the star’s apparent brightness as NGTS-1b passed in front of it. NGTS-1b’s mass is less than Jupiter, about 0.812 MJ (mass of Jupiter), but it has greater volume, with radius about 1.33 RJ (radius of Jupiter). Its density was reported to be 0.42 g cm^-3 (with error: +0.59 to -0.28), meaning Jupiter, whose density is 1.326 g cm^-3, is likely around thrice as dense as the exoplanet.

“The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us,” said lead author Doctor Daniel Bayliss of the University of Warwick, in England. “[S]uch massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars. This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form.”

The existing understanding of planetary formation, the team explained, says small stars can produce rocky planets but cannot pull in enough mass for larger, gaseous ones like NGTS-1b. Based on the observations, NGTS-1’s radius is 0.573±0.077 R? (solar radius) and using that value, astronomers calculated its weight to be about 0.598 M? (solar mass). The star’s density is almost ten times of the gas giant, 4.4 (with error: +2.4 to -1.4) g cm^-3. In comparison, the Sun’s density is 1.409 g cm^-3.

The research team discovered NGTS-1b using the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), an array of telescopes physically located in Chile, which was designed to search for planets around bright stars. NGTS-1 is a relatively dim red M-dwarf, which are very common in the universe, of apparent magnitude 15.52 ± 0.08. University of Warwick professor Peter Wheatley, who runs the NGTS, said, “NGTS-1b was difficult to find, despite being a monster of a planet, because its parent star is small and faint. Small stars are actually the most common in the universe, so it is possible there are many of these giant planets waiting to be found.”

To date, scientists have discovered only three gas giants which revolves around M-dwarf stars. The other two are Kepler-45b and HATS-6b which have masses 0.505 M_J and 0.32 M_{J respectively.}

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

On Sunday, the China Manned Space Engineering Office confirmed the Tiangong-1 space laboratory fell out of orbit, with much of the 10.4-meter structure burning up in Earth’s atmosphere before the remainder crashed into the Pacific Ocean at 8:15 a.m. Beijing time (0015 UTC).

“Through monitoring and analysis by Beijing Aerospace Control Center and related agencies,” reads a statement from the China Manned Space Engineering Office, “Tiangong-1 re-entered the atmosphere at about 8.15am, 2 April, Beijing time (0115 GMT). The re-entry falling area is located in the central region of the south Pacific.” The United States Joint Force Space Component Command and partners from eight other countries confirmed the crash.

Tiangong 1, which means “Heavenly Palace 1,” was China’s first space station. It was launched in 2011 as a stepping stone toward the development of a permanent space station but itself had an expected life of about two years. Authorities recalled the last astronauts in 2013 but continued to use the space station for other purposes until losing navigational control in 2016. Late last year, the Chinese informed the United Nations that they expected the space station would crash sometime in March 2018. Australian National University astrophysicist Brad Tucker described the station as “tumbling and spinning” for a long time before today’s re-entry, which rendered its movements less predictable. The European Space Agency nonetheless described the chance of a person being struck by a piece of Tiangong-1 as extremely less likely than being struck by lightning.

According to U.S. astronaut Leroy Chiao, the original plan had been for China to bring the space station down in a controlled fashion as the Russians did with the Mir space station in 2001. In 1979, the U.S. Skylab space station had an uncontrolled re-entry that scattered small pieces of debris across western Australia. No one was harmed, but the agency was issued a $400 fine for littering.

Several memorials to the space station appeared in China’s media. Public comments on the Weibo blog ranged from critical (“Re-entry? Everyone knows it’s a crash”) to poignant (“Goodbye Tiangong-1. You are our hero”) and other tributes. One Chinese newspaper, the Global Times criticized the portrayal of Tiangong-1’s end in Western media: “It’s normal for spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere, yet Tiangong-1 received so much attention partly because some western countries are trying to hype and sling mud at China’s fast-growing aerospace industry.”

According to reports, the second Chinese space station, Tiangong-2, remains in orbit. China plans to launch a permanent space station by 2022, whereas the United States is currently debating a plan to withdraw support for the International Space Station as of 2024.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Former Salt Lake City mayor and human rights activist Rocky Anderson took some time to discuss his 2012 U.S. presidential campaign and the newly-created Justice Party with Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn.

Anderson served as mayor of Salt Lake City for eight years (2000–2008) as a member of the Democratic Party. During his tenure, he enacted proposals to reduce the city’s carbon emissions, reformed its criminal justice system, and positioned it as a leading sanctuary for refugees. After leaving office, Anderson grew critical of the Democratic Party’s failure to push for impeachment against President George W. Bush, and for not reversing policies on torture, taxes, and defense spending. He left the party earlier this year and announced that he would form a Third party.

Anderson officially established the Justice Party last week during a press conference in Washington D.C.. He proclaimed “We the people are powerful enough to end the perverse government-to-the-highest-bidder system sustained by the two dominant parties…We are here today for the sake of justice — social justice, environmental justice and economic justice.” The party promotes campaign finance reform and is attempting to appeal to the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is currently working on ballot access efforts, and will hold a Founding Convention in February 2012 in Salt Lake City.

Among other issues, Anderson discussed climate change, health care, education, and civil liberties. He detailed his successes as mayor of Salt Lake City, stressed the importance of executive experience, and expressed his views on President Barack Obama and some of the Republican Party presidential candidates. He spoke in depth about former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, with whom he worked during the 2002 Winter Olympics, and fellow Utahan, former governor and U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, Jr..

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi peace activist who lives in the United States, was forced to change his T-Shirt, which bore an Arabic slogan, because it was found “offensive”.

The incident took place in JFK airport in New York. The activist Jarrar reported in his blog RaedInTheMiddle that he had checked-in his bags and was issued a boarding pass. After waiting near the gate to board his jetBlue airlines flight, and after having to gone through a secondary search, two officials approached him.

“People are feeling offended because of your t-shirt,” Raed reported that one of the men said to him. The writings on the T-Shirt said in both Arabic and English: “We will not be silent”.

Raed asked why this has offended anyone, and insisted his right to freedom of expression was violated.

According to Jarrar, one of the inspectors said, “You can’t wear a T-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘I am a robber’ and going to a bank”. The airport official, unable to read Arabic, was unyielding to protests by Jarrar that the English language version of the Arabic was accurate, and suggested he wear the shirt inside out.

“Many people called and complained about your t-shirt. Jetblue customers were calling before you reached the checkpoint, and customers called when you were waiting here in the boarding area”, Jarrar was told after he complained.

One employee from JetBlue offered to buy Jarrar a T-shirt to replace the one he was wearing, since the activist had none other after his bags were checked. Refusing at first, he agreed to wear one with “New York” written on it.

The officer on the scene commented that it need not have gone from one extreme to the other: wearing a T-Shirt with an Arabic peace slogan on it, to wearing one with ‘New York’. There is no reason to hate New York if you are an Arab speaking peace activist, according to Jarrar.

“I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the U.S. was that I don’t want an officer to make me change my t-shirt. I will pursue this incident today through a constitutional rights organization, and I am sure we will meet soon,” Raed said.

He was issued another boarding pass, with a different seat at the back of the plane.

JetBlue said it was investigating the incident but a spokeswoman said: “We’re not clear exactly what happened.” The spokeswoman also said the airline does not forbid Arabic T-shirts, but that it does take into account the concerns of its passengers.

The American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee said the US Transportation Department and the Transportation Security Administration were also investigating the incident after the committee lodged complaints on behalf of Jarrar.

“We Will Not Be Silent” is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.

It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

On Monday, two US Republican Party legislators, Greg Walden and Frank Pallone Jr., respectively the chairman and the ranking member of the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce, co-wrote a public letter to Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation, about open-source software (OSS) and improving its security. They requested Zemlin to answer their questions by no later than April 16.

The letter contained the following four questions; each of the first two has a further two follow-up questions.

1. Has the CII [Core Infrastructure Initiative] performed a comprehensive study of which pieces of OSS are most crucial to the “global information infrastructure”?
1. If not, does the CII plan to perform such a study?
2. What would the CII need in order to do so?
2. Has the CII, or any other organizations, compiled any statistics on OSS usage?
1. If not, does the CII plan to perform such a study?
2. What would the CII need in order to do so?
3. In your estimation, how sustainable and stable is the OSS ecosystem?
4. Based on your response to the previous question, how can the OSS ecosystem be made more sustainable and stable?

Walden and Pallone exemplified Heartbleed, a “critical cybersecurity vulnerability” that allowed the hacking of websites and passwords, and millions of medical records in 2014. They also wrote that, in response to that vulnerability, The Linux Foundation established a multi-million dollar project, the Core Infrastructure Initiative, intended to improve the global infrastucture of such software.

The politicians noted large tech companies like Microsoft, Apple Inc., and Adobe Systems respond more quickly to such critical vulnerabilities than distributors and developers of open-source software.

Open-source software is “publicly accessible” and usually freely-licensed for a wide range of use, such as modification and commercial uses. Walden and Pallone also expressed praise toward open-source software and cited a 2015 survey conducted by Black Duck Software saying 78% of companies used such software.